Prof. Jonathan Potts
Research Group
Prospective members
Postdocs: If you are interested in doing a postdoc under my supervision, there are various fellowship opportunities, such as the Newton Fellowships or UKRI Postdoctoral Fellowships, more of which are listed here. Please drop me an email if you are considering applying for one of these under my supervision/mentorship. I do not have any specific posts open for applications at the moment, but will put them here if and when I do.
PhD: If you are interested in doing a PhD with me, I have a lot of potential projects related to my research. Feel free to drop me an email if you want to discuss these informally. You can apply formally via the University website. Please make sure your application makes it clear why you want to apply for a PhD under my supervision and why you are interested in my specific area of research. Most of my publications can be found via my Google Scholar profile.
Current members
Poppy Jeffries: PhD candidate (co-supervised by Samantha Patrick, at Liverpool University)
I am developing mathematical models of seabird foraging behaviour in a vast, seemingly featureless, ocean environment. Here individuals gain partial knowledge of their environment, which drives a trade-off between exploring and exploiting the environment. An individual's position on this trade-off is influenced by their personality. My research aims to explore the foraging success of individual personalities, and how this will change as uncertainty in environmental conditions increases.
Abdulmajeed Alharbi: PhD candidate (co-supervised by Paul Blackwell, in the School of Maths and Stats at Sheffield)
My research of interest is around modeling and inferring stochastic processes driven by ecological applications. Especially, I am working on developing statistical methods for detecting the changepoints in an animal trajectories and inferring what influences an animal to change its direction.
Nesreen Abuoshlleh: PhD candidate
My work revolves around understanding the effect of animal movements and interactions on spatial population dynamics, using mathematical modelling. My initial aim is to understand the emergence of segregated home ranges from resource sharing: first by considering immobile consumables (i.e. plants) then moving prey (i.e. animals). Ultimately, we will use the latter scenario to understand how the landscape of fear (for mobile prey) emerges, what it might look like under different ecological scenarios, and how it affects demographic dynamics.
Past members
Dr. Valeria Giunta: Postdoctoral research associate 2021-23.
Funded by EPSRC grant EP/V002988/1. Now a lecturer at Swansea University.
Dr. Natasha Ellison, PhD candidate 2016-20 (co-supervised by Ben Hatchwell, in Animal and Plant Sciences at Sheffield)
Thesis. Revealing the drivers of space use patterns in a bird population using mechanistic modelling
Dr. Rhys Munden, PhD candidate 2016-20 (co-supervised by Luca Börger and Rory Wilson, both at Biosciences in Swansea University)
Thesis. Dude, where's my cow? Using high-frequency movement data to quantify animal space use
Dr. Yi-Shan Wang, PhD candidate 2015-9 (co-supervised by Paul Blackwell, in the School of Maths and Stats at Sheffield)
Thesis. Deriving patterns from animal movement decisions: a comparison of approximation techniques and a continuous-time resource selection method